Rich I'm in full agreement.
Even the rare times where bottle bac was fully dead, and I've never come across this one time in thousands of online cycles logged to completion and several where Seneye was tracking the progress, dilution and potential secondary inputs of filtration bacteria are carrying the system until the critical day ten mark (the ammonia drop time shown on any cycle chart)
though we need more data to know what happens across every bottle bac cycle, the available seneye fish+bottle bac cycles sure seem to agree also, that bottle bac + fish + huge dilution isn't allowing ammonia noncontrol to push nh3 above safety thresholds.
The statement: "cycling with fish and bottle bac harms fish" is one of the enduring misnomers in reefing. that statement is one thousand percent coming from API owners who have not converted that slight green ammonia reading nh4 into the correct nh3 reading we factor in reef tanks. when they do, it's within safety spec and the behavior of their fish lines up with the reading, but not as an initial nh4 read.
when people who report ammonia alerts are trained to read their sample as 12x~ lower before reporting, and that no tank runs with zero nh3, they feel alot better before making the panic relay.
Even the rare times where bottle bac was fully dead, and I've never come across this one time in thousands of online cycles logged to completion and several where Seneye was tracking the progress, dilution and potential secondary inputs of filtration bacteria are carrying the system until the critical day ten mark (the ammonia drop time shown on any cycle chart)
though we need more data to know what happens across every bottle bac cycle, the available seneye fish+bottle bac cycles sure seem to agree also, that bottle bac + fish + huge dilution isn't allowing ammonia noncontrol to push nh3 above safety thresholds.
The statement: "cycling with fish and bottle bac harms fish" is one of the enduring misnomers in reefing. that statement is one thousand percent coming from API owners who have not converted that slight green ammonia reading nh4 into the correct nh3 reading we factor in reef tanks. when they do, it's within safety spec and the behavior of their fish lines up with the reading, but not as an initial nh4 read.
when people who report ammonia alerts are trained to read their sample as 12x~ lower before reporting, and that no tank runs with zero nh3, they feel alot better before making the panic relay.